XBMC Subtitles can be set to automatically download (when pressing the subtitle button) the first synced subtitle if you enable Auto download first "sync" subtitle. Even though a synced subtitle is downloaded according to the add-on it's not always in sync. You can then either press the subtitle button again to manually select a different subtitle/provider or change the subtitle offset.

To bind the add-on to a key use ActivateWindow(SubtitleSearch) in the keyboard.xml file. (This was previously RunScript(script.xbmc.subtitles) before v13 Gotham.